


ending one minute at a time

by barrowjane



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:35:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrowjane/pseuds/barrowjane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not your Starfleet uniform.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ending one minute at a time

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, it's Jim Kirk through a Fight Club/Palahniuk lens. (Palahniukian lens? Something along those lines.) Originally posted on Livejournal some while back.

\----

So this is how it starts - the ship is burning, the kid’s dad is dying, dramatic declarations of love and loss are spoken, and then everything ends in fire.

So, yeah, your life may not be a vid movie, but at least it's got one hell of an opening act.

\----

School's a waste of time - all your classes are too slow and too stupid to be worth a damn, so you spend your time doing more important things - and more important people.

People call you a lot of things, growing up. James T. Kirk acquires a lot of names, and most of them aren't fit for polite company or really for any sort of company at all. In the end, _you’re_ not fit for much of anything here, except being screamed at by the asshole at one in the morning when the bastard's had too much to drink and you dumped out his last bottle of booze because Sam's gone and Mom's off world, so what the fuck does it matter anyway?

You washed it out. Stole some flowers from the neighbors two farms down and used the bottle as a vase. Figures he misses the gesture, but there's something fascinating about the way his fist splits your face wide open.

Everything moves too slowly here, so you take things apart. Even yourself.

\----

Life is an endless string of bars and mindless jobs. You build things from scrap and sell them, or keep them, or blow them up because they were yours anyway. You get _this_ , if nothing else - the rules of ownership, what happens when you belong to someone.

You've belonged to your father's ghost since the moment you were born.

Your father's son, Pike calls you, because that's what he sees - George Kirk the hero, shining through and filling up the empty spaces in you – and you hate it. Maybe you’re just a stage or a shadow to Pike, but you’re sure as all hell not _you_.

Turns out hate's a pretty powerful motivator, when you bother to use it right.

\----

You test out of your first-year classes. Fuck, you test out of your first-year classes in your _sleep_ , and the look on Uhura's face when you show up in her second-year seminar is worth the bruises that still ache, the split lip that you won't let Bones fix.

No one else seems to get it - if you fix things right away, they're not worth anything. Pain's got a purpose, a function. People erase scars with machines and medicine, stealing the history written on their skin.

You'd rather keep yours as it is, beautifully imperfect.

\----

It's not that you don't believe in no-win scenarios - although, yeah, you don't. It's more like you hate them, because people see that sort of shit and give up, and nothing - _nothing_ \- is worse than that. It's accepting something as inevitable, and that's bullshit.

It’s simple. If the rules say that no one ever passes the _Kobayashi Maru_ , then you change the fucking rules.

And people act like this shit is hard.

\----

Spock may be the first thing you’ve found truly interesting a long, long time and that's impressive all on its own. He’s so tightly wound that you wonder how he can even breathe, so wrapped up in rules and boundaries and guidelines and limits that he probably doesn't even know who he is anymore, just who he's told himself to be.

You believe in being honest with yourself, because that way it doesn't matter when everyone else lies to you.

It would be something to see who Spock is when he's being _honest_ , when he's broken himself down into his component parts: this is the bit that feels, even when he tells it not to; this is bit that wants things he cannot have. There are constants, after all. You can break yourself into pieces but you’ll still be left with the parts. You can’t throw bits of yourself away; you might have tried it.

You do get to decide how to put yourself back together, though, and that’s worth more than you once thought.

Later, your vision's fading out and Spock's hand is hot and heavy on your throat and you can't breathe- but Spock like this is better, far better than you could have imagined.

\----

If ( _when_ ) this plan works, it’ll be because you held nothing back. No guard rails, no safety net, and no room for failure. It’ll work because you refuse to let it fail and that’s always gotten you farther than anyone and everyone thought possible of you.

Nero’s snarling in your face, the same bullshit about what could have been, in that other timeline, where you were golden and perfect and had never been broken.

But that was in another life, and you live in this one. Besides, you think you got the better deal.

So you show Nero exactly what you think of destiny.

\----

This is space: dark and dangerous and fucking perfect. Bones always leaves out the last part. It opens up before you, an endless expanse of black, and shit, this is what deconstruction really is, this is what the bottom is, because from here you can see forever, looking up into eternity.

It's fucking amazing, and it's yours.

You've broken four ribs, you're bruised to hell and back and everything hurts. And this may be the most perfect moment of your life.


End file.
